Monday 25 August 2014

Bathroom Ta-Da!

Everyone keeps asking if we're finished with the house renovations... well, it's a house - one is never "done" a house!

But here at least is one finished room... or at least it's mostly finished.

Of course, despire poring through my files, I can't find a "before" photo.  So here's a photo of the old vinyl flooring that I found underneath the vanity in the upstairs bathroom:


Ick.  Interestingly, I actually found a very similar design in one of the major flooring companies' online catalogues.

So this room was completely gutted - walls, flooring, windows, the whole nine yards.  We re-arranged the layout a bit, since the original layout had the toilet facing the door.  We also made the doorway a bit wider, which came in handy when Kid 2 was in a wheelchair for a few weeks.  I love the way the flooring turned out... it's a Tarkett fibrefloor (vinyl) that is lovely and warm and cushy, but it looks like marble tile.  Did I mention it's warm underfoot?  A treat for the feet.




I hate tile surrounds in a shower/bath enclosure, so we went with a one-piece fiberglass tub/shower enclosure that the contractor picked out for me at Glass World.  I'm very happy with his choice - it's narrower at the foot/faucet end so filling it uses a bit less water, and it's nicely contoured for leaning back against.  

The contractor usually likes to recommend Toto dual-flush toilets for their reliability, but it just wasn't in our budget.  He did say that he'd had clients who had picked up toilets from Costco (without asking him) and while he had misgivings about it, they seemed to have no problems with them, so we went to Costco to check them out.  I was thrilled to see that they only had 2 toilets available, both at a very good price, so we went for the nicer and slightly more expensive one.  And I didn't have to look at an entire aisle of toilets.



A few weeks ago I installed some open shelves above the toilet for holding all the bathroom stuff.  I re-used shelves and shelf supports that I had on hand, but I think they came from Ikea.  The galvanized mini-buckets are plant pots, also from Ikea, and the green baskets are from Daiso.  On the windowsill is a tower of swing-out containers that we use to store all our hair do-dads.  Every woman with long hair should have a hair do-dad storage tower.  And that oblong thing between the toilet and the wall?  A brilliant Ikea item from a few years ago - the lid lifts up to reveal toilet-paper storage (it holds 9 rolls), and at the back is a toilet brush in its own container that you can lift out so you don't drip icky toilet water anywhere.  

When it came time to install the vanity, I didn't have much time, so I had to go with whatever I found in stock at the home improvement store.  This one was an all-but-the-faucet-in-one and while it was more blindingly white than I had in mind, I really liked the clean-lined sink top on it - no weird corners for gunk to build up.  The shaker door style fits in with my kitchen cabinets and, fortunately, the bathroom door swings such that you can't really compare the colours directly.


The mirror actually came with the house - it was a dusty old mirror with a tacky gold lumpy/carved frame that I found by the furnace in the basement.  I painted the frame shiny black, and replaced the old mirror.  It took a while for Husband Man and I to sort out how it would be mounted - and then he surprised me by putting it up one weekend while I was at work!

Kid 2 insisted that we had to have this faucet.  It cost about $40 more than I wanted to spend, so I told him that if he wanted it, he would have to chip in from his allowance savings, and he readily agreed.


I'm glad he insisted.  This is a lovely piece of jewelry in my bathroom.  It's a Price-Pfister faucet and despite the same brand's failure in my kitchen (long sad story), this one has performed well.

Of course it's not completely done!

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that the door swings towards the vanity.  I reversed the door swing hoping that it would work better this way.  But it means you have to close the door to use the sink.  That's not a big deal.  A bigger problem: we forgot to tell the electrician about the change in door swing, so the switches are all behind the door.  I hate that, but will have to live with it for now.  

The plastic drawer unit next to the vanity holds important supplies like band-aids and the like.  I just needed that extra little bit of storage and we had this one on hand.  It's not very attractive, but it works just fine for now.  Eventually I'd like to put a set of cabinetry drawers here, but it's tricky finding fully-functional drawers in that width (it definitely can't be wider than 12")

And I'd like to install a small tile backsplash behind the sink.  Just a few rows of subway tile would do the trick.  I will likely tackle that job when I do the backsplash in the kitchen.

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